"You can laugh as much as you like, Mrs. Vrain, but the matter is more serious than you suppose."
"Oh, I am sure that my loving stepdaughter will make it as serious as possible. She always hated me."
"Pardon me, Mrs. Vrain," said Lucian, colouring with annoyance, "but I did not come here to hear you speak ill of Miss Vrain."
"I know that! She sent you here to speak ill of me and do ill to me. Well, so you and she accuse me of killing Mark? I shall be glad to hear the evidence you can bring forward. If you can make your charge good I should smile. Oh, I guess so!"
Denzil noticed that when Mrs. Vrain became excited she usually spoke plain English, without the U. S. A. accent, but on growing calmer, and, as it were, recollecting herself, she adopted the Yankee twang and their curious style of expression and ejaculation. This led him to suspect that the fair Lydia was not a born daughter of the Great Republic, perhaps not even a naturalised citizeness, but had assumed such nationality as one attractive to society in Europe and Great Britain.
He wondered what her past really was, and if she and her father were the doubtful adventurers Diana believed them to be. If so, it might happen that Lydia would extricate herself out of her present unpleasant position by the use of past experience. To give her no chance of such dodging, Lucian rapidly detailed the evidence against her so that she would be hard put to baffle it. But in this estimate he quite underrated Lydia's nerve and capability of fence, let alone the dexterity with which she produced a satisfactory reply to each of his questions.
"We will begin at the beginning, Mrs. Vrain," he said soberly, "say from the time you drove your unfortunate husband out of his own house."
"Now, I guess that wasn't my fault," explained Lydia. "I wasn't in love with old man Mark, but I liked him well enough, for he was a real gentleman; and when that make-mischief Diana, who cocked her nose at me, set out for Australia, we got on surprisingly well. Count Ferruci came over to stay, as much at Mark's invitation as mine, and I didn't pay too much attention to him anyhow."
"Miss Tyler says you did!"